RE:Anyone thinkingI see currency being a factor on two fronts. If the Koch Brothers wanted to pick it up at a 76 cent dollar it's in their favour. If, for instance, they had reasonable grounds to believe that the Canadian peso would be appreciating to 85 cents this year thanks to Trump policy, it (a) makes the acquisition a winner right away and (b) makes the CAD profit less paltry when denominated in USD.
It would align with the GP takeout. There is value here, beyond currency, if run in a strategic way.
The dollar play is based on strong-arming Poloz to mirror US policy (e.g. not drop); bringing in more oil to the USA; increasing Canadian oil production. Trump has outsized influence in these three areas.
The critical take though is that WEF is hardly even 'cheap' by objective measures. It's pricier than CFP and WFT even. I'd take one of them any day. CFP is 2.5 times pricier, but it's >>2.5 bigger/better. Shoot, if they unloaded CFX alone it's cheaper than anything.
If you look at the bundle of assets you can buy I don't think WEF is all that hot. Tembec has a sum of parts in the billions(~3.0 to 4.0 or so) and trades at an EV of 800M.... won't hit sum of parts, but wil rise to 1.5B EV or so. RFP is a dog, but has even more of an asset base (albeit nobody wants their junk newprint mills). It would go back to the strategy where some firms aren't 'for sale'. Canfor for one, unless JP wills it. Temebc is another becuase it's held by equity and debt funds. My take is play the firms with the upside. A 10% take-over bonus for WEF is chump change compared to the 15% I made on Tembec alone today as it slowly catches up over a few years by 200-400% in the march of appreciaition to fair value.
Ainsworth was similar distressed asset that had room to go. When they sold it for a 3/4 of a billion it reflected closer to the intrisic value of three strong OSB mills. WEF at 3/4B, selling out for 7/8 a billion, is a mild premium for a handful of geographically strong but operationally blah assets.